Love Brightly

Home school is keeping us busy with fun activities like these book pumpkins! (I'll attempt an actual update on home school some other time). I got this idea from my friend Cheryl's blog Cutting Circles . As we learned about Fall, I looked for a fun craft idea that would meet some requirements for Kindergarten, and also look pretty cute displayed in my house. :) These pumpkins fit the bill perfectly. My Kindergartener traced and cut the pages from an old book. (She had several from which to choose as I'm in the midst of a closet clean-out project). She completed a dozen or so pages a day, which took her about 2 weeks. Spreading it out over time enabled her to master her cutting skills, and also built anticipation for the final results! We completed the remaining steps all in one day--gluing, spray-painting, and affixing the stick and ribbon. The girls enjoyed looking for sticks in our backyard. I found 2 scraps of green ribbon in my ribbon box (because I save ALL ribbon!...

I think it was the Cru ministry at Texas Tech that coined this term. At the beginning of the Fall semester, we want to gather freshmen. I know I quote this statistic every year in some form of prayer request or mailer, but it gets me every time: "80% of freshmen are open to the gospel within the first 2 weeks of classes, that number drops to 20% by week 6." Wow.   Statistics also show that the choices students make in college sets them on the path they will tend to follow for the course of their entire life. The first few weeks in a freshman's life is pivotal. So, like I said, we try to gather and meet as many freshmen as we can. One of our strategies is "The Big Something." Every year we mix it up a little bit in the details--it always has free food of some sort, and something fun to draw a crowd. We call it "The Big Something" while we plan for it because we don't know what the name should be until it comes together, but it is such a pillar in...